Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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1630. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the number of times planning applications have been referred to the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, for comment as a prescribed body under planning and development legislation since the introduction of designated area tracking system within the NPWS. [16137/18]

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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1631. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the number of planning application referrals to the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, since the introduction of the designated area tracking system, by county. [16138/18]

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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1632. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the number of planning applications referrals that have been have been granted or returned with no comment by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS. [16139/18]

Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1630 to 1632, inclusive, together.

The granting of planning permission is a matter in the first instance for the planning authorities and I have no role in this regard. Up to 10^thApril, 2018, 35,016 planning applications were referred to the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) of my Department in my role as a prescribed body under the Planning and Development Acts since the introduction of the Development Application Tracking System in 2005. The following table sets out the referrals by county.

Where the NPWS of my Department has no observations to make on a planning application referred to me in my role as a prescribed body under the Planning Acts e.g. where the matter is not relevant to NPWS, no response will issue to the planning authority concerned in that regard. Given the number of referrals since 2005, it is not possible to collate this data set. 

Table 1: NPWS figures for referrals 2005-2018